


Walking Far from Home: Sinner's Music

by wilySubversionist



Series: Walking Far from Home [3]
Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-28
Updated: 2011-03-28
Packaged: 2017-10-17 08:19:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/174796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilySubversionist/pseuds/wilySubversionist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You put an arm down near him and bump him a bit; he instinctively reaches up and puts his hand in yours. It’s part of the poem too."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walking Far from Home: Sinner's Music

**Author's Note:**

> _"i saw sinners making music, and i've dreamt of that sound, dreamt of that sound"_

Three blocks left and then you’ll stand on the doorstep of the shambling brick apartment building with the tube metal swingset. Hopefully, the kid will be swinging on it or playing in the muddy sandpit or something and you won’t have to go in. The woman who runs the joint always looks at you slant-eyed through a haze of cigarette smoke and it makes you feel like an asshole for having anything to do with her fly by night daycare bullshit, but she doesn’t ever come out into the yard where the kids play. It’s alright though, the high fence was what sold you on the whole operation.

One block away, you light a smoke and duck down a cross street. You never let him see you do it; he’s gonna have enough bad habits, though you know he can smell it and this gross babysitting venture isn’t exactly sparing him the secondhand anyway. Still, you need to keep a few boundaries intact.

You inhale deeply, only a little rattle in your chest, and you turn your face up to the warm late afternoon sun. It’s that part of spring, your favorite, where the buds on the sparse trees are about to just about to burst into bright green. You’ll be sure to watch when they actually do and take the little man to the park by the river, take the kendo sticks, maybe, or just sit out for a while. Kid’s too pale and you’re tired of the view from the roof. You need to see something alive.

You flick the butt in the gutter and start towards the building. Nobody outside, damn. Witch is probably going to want to get paid, too, and you ain’t got any loot. Bouncing at that joint on the Richmond Strip’s been pretty alright, but this whole afterschool deal has been a necessary but unwelcomed payout. Your day job at the Chevron keeps you away and though you half-heartedly courted some quid pro quo childcare arrangement with the single mom downstairs who works nights, you couldn’t go through with it. Her eyes were too sad and searching and you were definitely not ready to take your game to that cruel a place.

Up in the old lady’s place, there’s a half dozen kids loudly vrooming matchbox cars around the dirty carpet. Yours, though, is sitting in the corner reading a comic book. He’s got his shades pushed up high on his nose like you taught him, no peeking while he’s got his head down. He’s a little too small yet, hasn’t trained enough to hold off the asshole big kids who wouldn’t be able to let freaky albino eyes go uncommented on. Hasn’t learned to check his temper enough to not throw the first punch, either. After that…well, he’s fast, but you can only run so long.

“Hey, little man. Let’s blow this joint.”

He looks up at you and smiles brightly, an old-school marquee missing bulbs. Lost another tooth today, then. You think it might kill you to hold it in, but you don’t smile back.

He’s grabbing his backpack —motherfuckin’ Dora the Explorer: he wouldn’t talk to you for a while even after you explained the irony, the truth of it is if the bullies wanted a reason, might as well make it your fault, not something about him he can’t change— but before he can get to you, the hag calls your name from the kitchen.

You deal with her pretty easily, a pay-you-next-week dodge she scowls at but doesn’t protest. The kid’s already out in the hall waiting, and you two head down to the street in silence. The sun’s lower now and throwing pinks behind you as you walk toward the deepening blue.

Six blocks away now and you figure it’s time to do the little routine you both been practicing since he started kindergarten in the fall.

“How was school?”

“Sucky.”

“And afterschool?”

“Suckier.”

Like a fucking haiku. You grin and step into his path a little to shake him up. He swerves towards the grass edge of the sidewalk, no sweat, but not smiling. His gears are working, troubled thoughts looks like. You put an arm down near him and bump him a bit; he instinctively reaches up and puts his hand in yours. It’s part of the poem too.

You’ve turned up your street when he speaks again. “Emily R. said her dad got her a TV in her room.”

“Yeah? Who’s she, your girlfriend?”

“Nah.”

“’Kay.” He’s walking a little slower so you shorten your stride. Another block, three to go.

“Why don’t I have one, Bro?”

“Your own TV? Come on man, living room’s not that far away. I let you watch cartoons all the time.”

“No. A dad.”

Fuck. Maybe you were wrong about the kid’s fighting technique, because you are winded and bruised and you drop his hand like it burns you. _Fuck._ What do you say to that?

Nothing for another block while you think of a good lie. You’ve got dozens of backstories spread around, to the cops or DFPS, landlords, chicks who want to know why you’ve got a little boy’s picture in your wallet when you go looking for rubbers. So many different ways to spin it but you know when you look in his face you’ll forget them all. Maybe you should tell the real story, the bizarre little fairytale you’ve lived for six years now. He already knows all the good parts, since you’ve been writing it together.

“Hey.” You stop and crouch to him, steadying yourself on his slight shoulders. He just looks at you and you can still see he’s unhappy even though he’s playing at a blank face.

“Do you—do you want a dad, little man?”

“Yeah.” He looks embarrassed, whether for himself or you, you can’t tell. “Duh.”

“Why duh?”

“Everybody’s got a dad.”

“I guess. But does everybody have a bad-ass bro? Does everybody have a sick ninja beatmachine looking out for them?” You consider bringing up the other caregiver in your household. Nah, best to leave Cal out of it.

The kid shifts and fidgets. He won’t look at you as he says, “No. And that’s cool. But…didn’t I have a dad? Why isn’t he here?”

And there’s the original lie, rising up and choking you. Did he have a father? You found him in a hole in the ground. Probably three months old already. You have no idea where he came from or why or who made him.

But that’s not the truth either. Because he’s got your eyes and coloring and the slope of his jaw is softer but you two could have swapped chins like a Mr. Potatohead mix up and nobody would notice. Because you found your old shades in a box a few days before and felt fucking _compelled_ to keep them with you. And that day you carelessly put a divot in your favorite record and then had to go to your favorite record shop…

And when you saw him, you knew.

So what now? How do you explain that instant jolt and how you denied it? Killed it and buried it and said “bro” instead of “son”. How you picked a path —easier for you, not him— and kept up the illusion even now, even though you know better than anyone that kids need dads. Duh, everybody’s got a dad, and there aren’t grants given to out to study the lack of cool martial arts ventriloquists in the home.

While you’ve been trying to beat back that feeling, that undeniable connection you’ve been venerating and rejecting in equal parts since that first day, he’s been looking down, and he’s started to cry.

“Dave. Hey. Listen: I’m sorry you don’t have a dad, and if I could — could find one for you, I would. But little man, we’re doing alright, you and me. Shit is pretty excellent, considering. You don’t want to hear my war stories from the group home, yo. Hey. Look at me.”

He obeys. There’s two thick wet tracks running down his face and his lips are trembling, but he does look you in the eye. Christ only knows what he sees.

Your half-gloved hands are cupping his face; you’re always shocked at how soft he is, how pliant, and every touch astonishes you. Fucking kid, man. Your thumbs snake up his cheeks, under the rim of his glasses until you can feel his eyelashes brush their tips. No need to take the shades off to wipe his tears, you’ve been studying his face for so long you could guess the distance from the bridge of his nose to the corner of his eye straight up to the big freckle over his eyebrow with a carnie’s freakish accuracy. Every morning when you see him, it feels like going to church and you read his expression like a fucking Bible. _Your_ fucking kid, man.

“We’re going to be okay, you and me. I know it’s rough sometimes, and I’m trying. It sucks not having parents, I fuckin’ know it. But I’m gonna do right by you. You’re gonna be okay, promise. Ya heard?”

“I heard.”

He shakes his head a little and sniffles while you straighten up and offer him a fist. His watery but sincere grin as he pounds it is the best thing you’ve ever seen.  


*****

You watch this touching little scene crouched behind a mailbox kittycorner to their – your – position and don’t know what to think. At all. You’ve followed past-you since shit got wonky on the playground; Emily R. and your best nap-time bud Matt – he moved in second grade, you recall bitterly – were swinging, engaging in a friendly boast-off. Emily’s family/appliance situation won, of course, and you felt jealousy like heartburn rise up and etch itself into your chest. So damn unfair.

The whole memory is so clear, so vivid to you. You’ve dreamt of that day over and over again, trying to place it in how the story shook out, trying to fit together the unalloyed trust you felt in Bro when he made you that promise and then all the bullshit that came after. You’d tried to hold him to it, little Lalonde-esque guilt trips and Keri Strug type flip-outs every once in a while, but from where you stand, hiding like a chump scarcely a hundred feet away, you were so pitifully unsuccessful you aren’t even sure if he remembered what he swore to.

But it looks he did, right? Because this third person eagle eye shit proves you aren’t that kid, not anymore. You’re wearing the black and purple-trimmed suit you alchemized in the last hours of the Reckoning and you’ve got a slice across your Adam’s apple. You aren’t the one making an ass of yourself crying about wanting a father right in front of that very same dickhead deadbeat. Before the whole ectobiology reveal went down, you didn’t have any clue how deep Bro’s Master of Irony title actually went. Answer: all the way to the damn core. Now watching this from outside, you feel queasy, like you had old coffee grounds for breakfast.

It has to be his memory. One of the hims floating around in this eldritch spaghetti-armed bubble bath, who knows, maybe a past-him, an alternate-him, a dead-him. Rose was right: the whole fucking point of this godawful game seemed to be finding out how bizarre the string of adjectives you used to define yourself could get. Self-realization through crappy challenges as labyrinthine and circuitous as the stable loops you wove, insane corkscrews of change.

Doesn’t really matter, though. Every Bro you know of made that same promise, sealed it with a BUNP, and promptly broke it a thousand ways every chance he got. Sometimes because he had to, you guess, but too often he did it gleefully, grinning and pushing you and basically daring you to hate him. You’ve never been so close as right fucking now, watching this tiny past-you smile and believe him and feel relieved for Christssakes. Now you know better. _Asshole._ You’re sick of this, would even rather go hang out with the dead horse-dick troll than watch, but when they resume walking and enter the apartment lobby, your feet follow on their own.

While Bro has his back to the door hovering over the stove stirring up generic cheezepowder into some overcooked noodles and little-you is curled up on the futon watching Power Rangers (you knew at the time that you had to be ironic about it, but you honestly found the battles in the fake cardboard town awesome), you sneak through the apartment and hide yourself behind the cracked-open bathroom door.

You remember so clearly, relived this so often, it feels stupid to actually look: Bro is going to give you a bowl of mac’n’cheese and jump over the futon’s back and land heavily. He’s right up close to you, invading your space, and remembering how glad you were to feel his heat makes you ache with embarrassment. Even then, you knew he was full of it, kind of. Maybe. Why’d you ever give a shit?

He makes fun of the show, disparaging the overdubs more gently than you thought at the time, and you don’t need to see Little Dave’s face to know it’s red and downcast. You know how you stammered to deny, pretended to hate what made you happy. Constant reversals like burying yourself in a grave he wouldn’t let you stop digging. Your hand goes to the Snoop Snowcone Machete and you’re already in the hall when you come to your senses and realize cutting Bro’s throat wouldn’t actually mean anything here.

Tuck back against the wall and keep yourself hidden, try to calm down, because what’s coming next is going to fucking kill you, you know it. 11 minutes 46 seconds until dude is just going to destroy you. A pseudo-caring build up to just more shit and lies. It’s an eon of sick anticipation and desperately trying to slow your pulse, to wrestle back control, and then he rises, cracks his knuckles over his head, and heads over to the turntables. He leisurely selects some records, plugs some shit into a stripped surge protector then clears his throat.

“Hey, dude, I’m about to drop a illcrazy mix. You wanna help?”

The kid on the couch says nothing; you were literally dumbstruck. Every time you’d gotten within a foot of his equipment, he’d shouted curses and threats and quips about peanut butter residue gumming up the moving parts. Every time you’d retreated sheepishly. Why would he now ask you to join, to put your hands on what was most precious? In the hall, you still have no clue, but you know how you swelled with pride as you clicked the TV off. How grateful you felt, and grown up. Now it’s so empty, such a cruel gesture; you dig your nails into your palms to fight back angry tears.

The little kid stands tentatively to his big brother’s left, stares hawklike at the turntables, memorizing their surfaces and jutting knobs. Bro places the first two LPs on the spindles and starts them rotating; the kid steps up to within arm’s reach confidently. It’s just bravado: you were terrified. Your game face is on and you are ready to be the big man, but you can’t even reach the platter comfortably. Bro laughs and steps away, in second he’ll come back with a milk crate for you to stand on.

You hold your breath and sink towards your bedroom. If he looks the wrong way and notices you this whole thing would come crashing down, and you wouldn’t get to hear it. Yet he doesn’t and the joint hallucination just keeps unspooling. Exhaling slowly, you feel stupid for worrying about it.

When he stands beside little-you like a boxer, feet apart and ready to strike, you stop listening and only watch. You know the audio by heart: he’s going to explain beat matching, the essence of a choice sample, the theory behind when to scratch and when to just let the beat speak for itself. He effortless blends so-called “dope dogma” and practice, and you remember desperately trying to absorb as he moved quickly between topics; now you can tell he moved impossibly slow, restraining himself. You try so hard to focus, to pick either then or now but find yourself drifting between the admiration coupled with a burning desire to please you felt, and… whatever this is. You’re still pissed for all that will come after, but there’s something else, too. Completely foreign. Your ears are hot and the temporal dissonance has you shook up like a two-liter in a paint mixer.

The only thing that’s the same is the sound and the rapt attention you pay him, as a child to his hands, now to his face. Your past-self, so trusting and ( _ugh_ ) sensitive, looks up to him lips pursed, but the adoration, the hunger there could be seen from space. When you put your tiny fingers to the vinyl for the first time, Bro’s proud, paternal smile is fucking **unbearable**.  


******

You don’t get too far into the lesson, maybe two or three minutes, when you see a pantleg and a purple shoe in the hall. You grumble “what the balls?” and move to take out your sword, but it happens too fast: the stranger in the hall steps forward and your sword isn’t there and the blood staining his suit brings you around to your own death.

Little man next to you winks out of existence mid-scratch, but you hardly spare a look. Usually when that happens, when you wake up to the surreal nature of this place, you freak out and try to keep the kid with you. Always grasping and pleading and failing, eventually forgetting and starting again. But the boy at the turntables isn’t the real Dave here, you guess, and you don't try to keep him.

The real one, the one who looks so much older, the one you hopehope _hope_ isn’t the Alpha stands at the corner of the futon and just stares at you levelly. Casual observers would note that his face is empty and apathetic. You see that he is Having A Time. There’s rage and hurt and sadness, maybe a couple little notes of confusion or sheer surprise. Violent overtones. Oaky finish. You just stare blankly back, tense and waiting for him to rush you.

But he doesn’t. He breaks the silence, all faux nonchalance and angry confidence.

“Sup, cocksucker. How’s being dead treating you?”

“Ah, just chillin’ with my Lovecraftian homeboys. That life flashing before your eyes shit: it keeps happening. _You_ know.” You emphasize that last bit, maybe it will get him to open up about his own situation. You feel tight between your shoulder blades, nervous, waiting to hear the worst— it was all worthless, you bought him time but not a way out, you didn’t teach him enough or do enough and now he’s dead for real.

“Yeah, well, I haven’t been here long. Lost a handle on a loop and got doomslashed.” Thank fucking Jesus. You can finally breathe. “Came to in a bubble watching your maudlin bullshit. This how you’re spending the afterlife? Reliving the good times, when you were a huge jagoff and fucked me up forever?”

You start to respond with a chuckle and choke. Keen-eyed motherfucker, your kid is. You really try to hold it together but your eyes are stinging and voice trembling.

“Yeah, pretty much.”  


******

What the **fuck**?

Your fucking Bro is _crying_. Like a little girl or that fucking blubbering asshole from Ol’ Yeller. Well, maybe not full on bitch-type weeping; it’s still kind of a manly thing, just a few tears and emotion breaking his throat, his head is still up and he’s looking at you. You don’t know what to do with this information.

It probably should mean something more than it does. If this were one of John’s shitty movies, you would immediately feel relieved, feel like all the hard and sharp shit you’ve been carrying inside is irrelevant. The anger would melt away or some similar nonsense. It doesn’t and you still haven’t ruled out just full on clocking him in the face or screaming 'til your eyes pop or throwing something heavy and fragile.

But yeah, you aren’t doing that. Blame it on the shock, because watching him get upset is like bleeding out. The point of your dramatic reveal/confrontation move was a little vague, sure. Maybe you wanted to make him pay, just a little, but you weren’t looking for this and you have no idea what the next step is after your dead clone-dad abusive-brother gets misty.

When he says your name, though, it’s clearer. He’s sounds like a wounded animal. Fuck, this is exactly like Ol’ Yeller.

You blink fast behind your cracked shades. So what, you're supposed to make _him_ feel better? Shit’s a lot easier when it’s about a dog and shotgun and a sappy coming of age tale that teaches you about being a man. You’re pretty sure neither of you know fuckall about that, right now: you feel tiny in his shadow again and he's fucking crying.

So, you run down the list of possible actions. Not gonna hit him or hurt him, not gonna bitch at him more, not gonna open a dialogue about your painful little fee-fees or his, sure as fuck not gonna hug it out. It’s making your head hurt to see him suffering so obviously, but you don’t really want him to stop either. So comfort’s out and escalating’s out and just standing there like a dumbass is feeling stupider every second.

You’re not sure why, but the look on Bro’s face when you brush past him and pick up a new record sleeve makes you think you’ve done the right thing. A downgrade of tensions: yellow alert, not red.

It’s not hard to recreate the jam: you could pull the next samples blindfolded. This particular sequence was the first thing you recorded when Bro got you your own equipment, trying to get it just right again. You weren’t quite fast enough to make up for that extra set of hands and you’d be fucked before you’d admit that you were resurrecting that first collaboration. Before you’d admit what it meant. How it was the last thing you heard before you fell asleep, every night.

Looks like you don’t have to. Bro sniffles loudly once, ironic snot maybe, as he slides up next to you. His hands are steady and he knows what comes next, when to switch the vinyl or just let you do it yourself. Sometimes you throw in little flourishes, tweaks, shit you didn’t learn ‘til much later, some of it not even from him. He just bounces with the beat and does his thing, faster now, not holding back. It’s the same but better somehow, and it’s starting to sound really fucking cool.

Eventually, even you don’t know how long time is here, you get to the point where the memory and music end. He declared bedtime and unplugged the equipment, and you were disappointed but undeniably tired. The two of you had brushed your teeth at the same time, him looming and jokingly threatening to spit paste on you. He’d tucked you in and crouched down and put his hand on your head, palm on your ear and fingers stroking your hair. He was smiling when you closed your eyes.

Fuck. That. Noise. You reach beside you and grab whatever, flipping it up on the platter quickly. You slam the fader over immediately, no fucking room for silence, and the effect is a little jarring but still good. Your goddamn brother, or who cares what else, hisses an appreciative “dude.” His voice is cracking a bit again, aggressively emotional. It mostly sounds like a green light to rock the fucking house.  


******

When the kitchen starts to snow, thick fluffy clumps floating down fast —reminds you of Goldschlager as it settles after a pour— you grab at Dave and fold him in your arms. The records screech, but he doesn’t resist. Watching the white flakes build and spread, you put your lips close to his ear; no lies left, you whisper just what you feel, always felt. The rhythms of your hearts sync when he finally encircles your waist with his arms.

Shivering, speaking that old promise over and over again, louder and louder, you shut your eyes, daring the encroaching cold to prove you a liar. Your stomach turns and your chest aches and your head is swimming but your heart shouts in time with his: Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it you bastards. Just you fucking try.


End file.
